That snug relationship between a too-credulous press and an administration willing to trade juicy information morsels in exchange for complete control of the war message was on stark display Jan. 17. That's when Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Mueller held a hurried press conference, carried live on CNN, to unveil five videotapes found in the rubble of a home near Kabul owned by Muhammad Atef, a top aide of bin Laden's. Five men seen on the tapes were identified as deadly terrorists, who, in the words of Ashcroft, "may be trained and prepared to commit future suicide terrorist attacks."

What made the discovery so unsettling, Ashcroft said, was the fact that "the videotapes depict young men delivering what appear to be martyrdom messages from suicide terrorists." The attorney general added that the seriousness of the threat demanded the information be released immediately. The names and pictures of the five al-Qaida members were released as a sort of worldwide version of the TV show "America's Most Wanted," as Ashcroft asked for tips from concerned citizens in helping track the men down.

The press eagerly complied. The New York Times played the story on Page 1, where it also ran color head shots of the men. The Washington Post also printed the story on its front page, reporting excitedly that "five al-Qaida members ... may be on the loose and planning suicide attacks against Western targets."

Meanwhile, CNN reported extensively about the "extraordinary videotapes," while Fox News commented on their "chilling" content.

In fact, there wasn't a television news operation in the country that didn't display the government's most-wanted poster of the five al-Qaida members. It was the best prop producers had had in weeks.

Yet like the reports about hijackers hurtling towards nuclear power plants, there was something odd about this news bulletin. For instance, pressed further at the press conference, Ashcroft seemed to back away from his original, already tentative description of the taped utterances, suggesting, "We believe that these could be, and likely appear to be, sort of, martyrdom messages from suicide terrorists." Sort of? Either the statements were martyrdom messages or they were not. Even the thinly stretched Arabic translators inside the government must be able to make that simple distinction.

Meanwhile, what else did the men say on the tapes? The media was never told, because before being shown snippets of the tapes, the government stripped all the sound off. Reporters instead were reduced to describing the men's silent gesticulations in an effort to wring out any meaning. Analysts were still going over the tapes, Ashcroft said. (Three weeks later, no transcript of the tape has been released.)

There was even less to the story that that. Ashcroft and Mueller did not know, or would not say, if the men planned any imminent attacks, when the tapes were made, when the tapes were found, who found the tapes, what the nationalities of the five men were, if they were in America, or even if they were dead or alive.

No matter. The tapes were universally treated as very big news. Two weeks later though, in a brief, 200-word aside, the Washington Post reported intelligence officials had determined the martyrdom tapes were actually made more than two years ago. Would the Post or the New York Times have played the story on Page 1 if editors had known the tapes were made in 1999? Probably not.

Sharing dramatic, albeit often dubious, terrorist revelations is one way the White House has co-opted the press. Granting prized access is the other. The recent eight-part, 40,000-word series in the Washington Post was a prime example. Written by Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, "10 Days in September: Inside the War Cabinet" offered readers an inside glimpse into how the administration dealt with the Sept. 11 attacks and mapped out its strategy for the war on terrorism. The Post reporters were granted extraordinary access for the series, in order to reconstruct those 10 days four months after the fact, getting to read notes from National Security Council meetings as well as enjoy lengthy interviews with senior administration officials, including Bush himself.

Conservative pundits cheered the series, suggesting it was a Pulitzer Prize must-win. Raves from the right were understandable: "10 Days in September: Inside the War Cabinet" erased any suggestion of Bush as a detached as well as inexperienced leader who relies on more seasoned aides to get things done.

To say the series presented the administration, and Bush in particular, in a favorable light would be an understatement. We see Bush utterly sure of himself, operating on gut instincts, leading round-table discussions, formulating complex strategies, asking pointed questions, building international coalitions, demanding results, poring over speeches and seeking last-minute phrase changes.

The portrait was so contrary to public perception that it was reminiscent of the timeless "Saturday Night Live" sketch that ran at the height of Iran-Contra scandal. It featured an outwardly jolly and oblivious Ronald Reagan, who in private Oval Office meetings revealed himself as a mastermind of the operation's arcane covert details, barking out orders to befuddled senior aides. In the same way, but without satire, the Post series suggested that a president often depicted as a genial delegator, who ducked the Vietnam War with a stateside post in the Texas Air National Guard, is in fact a hands-on commander in chief of the war on terror.

Certainly there's nothing wrong with highlighting work well done, and public officials deserve to bask in genuine accomplishments. But the notion that this White House, perhaps the most secretive in a generation, simply opened its doors to the Washington Post and hoped senior officials would come out looking okay is naive. (It also seems a sign of the times that Woodward, the reporter who, with Carl Bernstein, broke the Watergate scandal and led to the resignation of President Nixon, is now lionizing the wartime President Bush. But Woodward has increasingly settled into a role as the official stenographer to Washington power -- as evidenced by a paean to former Vice President Dan Quayle that suggested he'd been underestimated as a leader.)

During an online chat last week hosted by the Post, Woodward conceded that reporters "are always prisoners of their sources" and that "the Bush administration is proud of what occurred in these 10 days, and they believe it's a story that should be told early, rather than late."

But Woodward insisted he and Balz often used contemporaneous notes and documents to support what they wrote. On several occasions though, quotes were simply passed along verbatim. For instance, the Post reported that an angry Bush, flying around on Air Force One just hours after the attack, told Vice President Cheney in private phone conversation, "We're going to find out who did this, and we're going to kick their asses." Does that quote ring a bit too good to be true? Only Cheney and Bush know for sure. Much of the series read as though the Post reporters served as unpaid White House stenographers, typing up its version of history and then publishing the complimentary account to coincide with Bush's war-themed State of the Union address.

Then there's the now infamous "War and Destiny" February issue of Vanity Fair. In exchange for granting unique access, the Bush White House was toasted with the kind of 20-page VF spread, complete with Annie Leibovitz portraits, that the magazine usually reserves for Hollywood's next generation of photogenic TV and movie actors. The magazine's copy, too, was as soft as a press junket interview with an up-and-coming starlet.

Christopher Buckley chronicled Bush's rise and wondered if we weren't all better off with a president lacking "complexity of mind." And Reagan biographer Edmund Morris speculated if Bush's "alive or dead" comment about Osama bin Laden was actually inspired by Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of State John Hay, who made a similar proclamation in 1904 in response to a Tangier kidnapping. (Odds are it was not.)

One wonders whether Vanity Fair agreed upfront to yank dissenting voices about the war from its "War and Destiny" issue -- but more likely, it was simply the natural, respectful reaction to getting such great access to the wartime commander in chief. Whatever the truth, the issue contained three other war-related stories, including the hawkish "Inside Saddam's Terror Regime," which could have been penned by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Appearing on MSNBC just as the issue hit newsstands, VF editor David Friend, who oversaw the special spread, explained that the magazine had contacted White House spokesman Fleischer and communications chief Hughes, and pitched them on the idea of profiling White House "icons" during wartime. They liked the idea. Fleischer and Hughes were then featured among the icons.

The whole purpose, said Friend, was "to see how the White House was projecting itself in a time of war."

The answer, of course, is pretty damn well, thanks to Vanity Fair and the rest of the media.

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